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HBO Wants To Make Sure You Notice

Spike Lee was there; so were Christopher Walken and Aidan Quinn and Stephen King and the present and former police commissioners of the City of New York. The party at Roseland on Wednesday night was the biggest ever given by HBO, no stranger to lavish premiere parties.

But then HBO has never before had anything quite as big as ''The Sopranos'' to promote.

The cable channel had planned on about 1,000 guests; about 1,800 showed up for the party and screening of two episodes in the new season. The Ziegfield theater could not contain the crowd, so HBO bused the latecomers to its headquarters on Avenue of the Americas. On the way they may have glimpsed one of the many ''Sopranos'' billboards dotting the city, or at least seen a city bus go by with the cast glaring out in full menace just above the message, ''Family. Redefined.''

Had some taken the subway, there's a chance they could have ridden in one of the cars ''fully branded'' -- as HBO's top marketing executive put it -- with ''Sopranos'' advertising: nothing but black-and-white images of the cast.

It is all part of what Eric Kessler, the executive vice president for marketing at HBO, called a campaign ''comparable to the biggest thing we've ever done.'' And why not, he added, ''We're talking about the return of the best show on television.''

''The Sopranos'' won that label from virtually every critic last season. And for a show that is unarguably the most talked-about series ever on HBO, a channel that puts a premium on generating talk, the effort to reintroduce it to the public is extending just about everywhere HBO can reach. That includes HBO.com/Sopranos, of course, the most-used Web site ever associated with HBO, executives said. It features ersatz F.B.I. files on each character, gossip about who may be rubbed out and polls on the season's favorite lines of dialogue. (Last season's winner was uttered by Anthony Jr. in Episode 1, about the absence of his grandmother's cherished ziti. Like many ''Sopranos'' lines, it can't be printed here.)

Then there are the CD of songs from ''The Sopranos,'' a music video, a traveling ''waste management'' truck (Tony's not-so-true calling) and a series of on-the-air promotions on multiple cable channels. There's even a promotion on a broadcast network, CBS, with the most prominent and expensive of those ads scheduled during the N.F.L. playoff games this weekend.

The promotional campaign is huge for HBO, both in significance and expenditure, though Mr. Kessler and other HBO executives declined to give an overall price. ''Sopranos'' images are so widespread, on display at bus stops as well as the entrance of Lincoln Tunnel, that some of the cast and crew are beginning to worry about a backlash. At the premiere party, James Gandolfini, who stars as Tony Soprano, said, sounding as if in character, ''I'm sure people will be gunning for us this year.''

Jeff Bewkes, HBO's chairman, said the pay cable channel was only trying to make up for ''the big marketing disadvantage'' it faced in comparison with the established broadcast networks. Only about 25 million subscribers receive HBO, about a quarter of the homes that are available to the broadcast networks.

And trains. Mr. Kessler said HBO had also bought space on Metro North trains. That's just New York awareness, of course, he said. For more national exposure, HBO has turned to magazines like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, People and Entertainment Weekly, all of which will be running a four-page ad on ''The Sopranos.''

Nothing is likely to be seen more widely than a commercial on an N.F.L. playoff game, but even there Mr. Bewkes said HBO was hamstrung. ''CBS is the only network that will allow us to buy time,'' he said. And CBS forbids HBO to give the time and date of the ''Sopranos'' season premiere (Sunday at 9).

''Tony Soprano's Waste Management'' truck will appear in parking lots at the N.F.L. playoff games and at the Super Bowl. Cardboard cutouts of the characters will be available for fans to pose with for pictures.

The channel also expects MTV or VH-1 to begin running a video featuring the show's theme song, ''Woke Up This Morning,'' by the group A3.

This season's episodes include cameo appearances by people like Janeane Garofalo, Sandra Bernhard, Jon Favreau and Frank Sinatra Jr., all playing themselves.

Many of them joined the other celebrities at the premiere at the Ziegfield and the party at Roseland. It was one more indication of how far the show has come. Last year's premiere was in the basement of the Virgin Megastore on Broadway, and the party was at John's Pizzeria on West 44th Street.

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A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2000, on Page E00001 of the National edition with the headline: HBO Wants To Make Sure You Notice. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe